


The Steel Eye and Tight Jaw Say It All

by waketosleep



Series: Black Widow: The Movie I'm Not Writing [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambushes and Sneak Attacks, Gen, Red Room (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: Bucky witnesses Natasha getting ambushed by a girl with a very familiar fighting style. He can't say it's the first time he's ever seen someone try to assassinate her, but Natasha showing mercy is a new one.





	The Steel Eye and Tight Jaw Say It All

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise five-years-later series continuation! This follows [I Wish I Could Buy Back the Woman You Stole](http://archiveofourown.org/works/478119) and you'll probably get more out of this story having read (or re-read? Maybe it's been a while for you) that one first. Title is from "Shadow Stabbing" by Cake.

Bucky is caught off-guard when Natasha detours them, cutting into an alley with only a press of her elbow into his side to warn him first. The alley goes clear through to the next block but it's barely wide enough to fit a car through and crowded with stuff; the fire doors set into the walls on either side are surrounded by trash cans and he can see a couple of splintering wooden pallets leaning together up against one wall, closer to the far end. It isn't any kind of shortcut back to Steve's place and it's certainly not a scenic promenade.

When Natasha casually transfers her grocery bag from her left hand to her right and then bumps her knuckles into his, foisting it off on Bucky to free up her hands, he wonders what he's missed. He hefts both bags a little to get a better grip on the handles. He's already carrying the one with the milk and brown sugar for Steve--what they went out for in the first place--and hers is all impulse-bought junk food to satisfy her and Steve's mutual sweet tooth, and he's got a comment about being a pack mule on the tip of his tongue when she murmurs, "Stay back," and gives him a little push toward the grimy concrete wall.

Bucky is pretty sure he hears the clang and sees the trash can spilling onto the ground, a black knife handle sticking out of its side, almost before he sees Natasha dodge it. She uses her momentum to pivot on her anchored foot and whirl around to face the mouth of the alley they'd come in through. He flattens his back against the wall, bags ready to drop from his fingertips and reach for his gun, but she told him to stay back and he's got groceries in his only hand, so he'll wait till it's necessary to drop it all on the dirty ground. A woman of about Natasha's build and just a couple inches taller is rushing at her, another knife held up in a reverse grip. She's got long brown hair, tied back, and she's wearing a green hoodie and skinny jeans. She doesn't even seem to notice he's there, just lunges at Natasha.

Natasha's face is a blank mask as she blocks the first slash and ducks the second, letting the other woman back her further into the alley--away from him, he does not fail to notice--but every backwards step she takes is sure-footed as she keeps trying to disarm the woman. Bucky relaxes and leans against the wall to spectate. There really isn't enough space for him to join the fray, anyway. Natasha has more room this way, to maneuver where she wants the woman to go. She finally catches a grip on her attacker's sleeve and collar and throws her into the opposite wall, slamming the hand gripping the knife into the bricks until the woman drops it. Natasha kicks it away right before her grip is reversed; the brunette has her in an arm lock now and tries for a shoulder throw but should have moved away from the wall first. Natasha plants both feet against the wall (Bucky's glad to see she's wearing her beat-up high top runners instead of the high-heeled boots she's been obsessed with lately) and then runs up it, backflipping over the woman's head and shaking her grip free as she hits the ground in a crouch.

Everything is in suspended motion for a moment; Bucky's heartbeats seem to slow down as he watches the standoff. Natasha's attacker shifts into a stance he recognizes very well and he feels the first glimmer of understanding of what's going on here. When her hand snaps out at Natasha's face, flinging something at her, Natasha seems far less surprised than Bucky and just moves around the projectile like she's water. It collides with the wall Bucky's leaning on, close enough that he shies away from the crackle of electricity and the tang of ozone that comes out of the little disc when it collides with the concrete. He sees when she pulls a second one out of her sleeve, concealed somehow around her wrist; Natasha spins out of the path of her throw and inside her guard, locking her arm straight at the elbow and driving the woman shoulder-first into the brick wall again, and he puts two and two together. Those discs are Natasha's toys, one of the many secret features of her Widow's Bite stun apparatuses. This girl fights like a Red Room trainee. She fights like Natasha used to fight.

If you give Natasha a knife, she still fights like that. But barehanded, like she is now, Bucky has seen her tactics morph into something the Red Room would never have known they could get out of her. She boxes like Tony Stark, throws bone-crunching pressure-point kicks like Bruce Banner, weaponizes her defences like Steve and leaps into flying head scissor throws like a pro wrestler. Natasha is a human wrecking ball. Defecting to America has been very good for her.

Bucky watches with clinical detachment as Natasha hits her opponent with punch combinations, looking for openings to land a jab or get a fresh grip on her clothing. The girl is fast but not fast enough to gain any advantage. Natasha lands a punishing-looking right hook on her unprotected jaw and wastes no time getting a double lapel grip while her assailant is still staggering from the punch. Natasha yanks down as she brings her knee up sharply, directly into the girl's solar plexus. As the girl doubles over, gasping for air, Natasha twists (so gracefully it's almost like she's dancing) and drops her elbow directly onto the girl's back where her liver should be. The girl chokes out a hoarse scream (Bucky is a little sympathetic, liver shots are excruciating) and collapses in a heap on the grimy pavement.

Natasha puts a knee in her back, grabs a handful of her hair and pulls her head up from the ground. Then she does something Bucky has never, ever seen her do.

"And who might you be?" she asks.

"What does it matter? Just kill me already."

"Are you in a hurry to die?" asks Bucky, still baffled by this turn of events.

The woman turns to him as much as she can with the grip Natasha has on her hair and glares. "Shut up, cripple. Nobody asked you." She winces when Natasha gives her hair a yank and shakes her head around a little.

"You should be more respectful to your elders," Natasha chides. "You don't know who that is? You must not, or you would never have turned your back on him, I hope."

"He's some pathetic amputee carrying your groceries; what do I care who you're pity-fucking, Romanova? He didn't have the sense to run away, so he wouldn't have had to grieve for very long before I sent him into hell after you."

Natasha's eyebrows shoot up. "What do they teach the children in Red Room these days?" she asks nobody in particular; she's switched from English to Russian. "You don't recognize the Winter Soldier when he's standing in front of you? Yasha, you must feel insulted."

Bucky just about rolls his eyes. "It's quite a blow but I'll do my best to recover."

"He's not the Winter Soldier," the girl scoffs, but she doesn't quite manage to keep an uncertain waver out of her voice, and she's staring at his pinned-up jacket sleeve.

"Not anymore," agrees Bucky, shifting to lean more comfortably against the wall. Natasha never plays with her victims like this. This girl should be dead already. "But you probably should have done a little more recon."

"Do you understand now, little girl?" Natasha pulls the girl's head back to look into her eyes. "What you've gotten yourself into? You didn't know to find out and your masters never bothered to tell you--because they _must_ know he's around. Makes it seem like they were just throwing you away. Were you a troublemaker? Someone decided you were expendable?"

The girl has gone pale and her lower lip is trembling a little. "The Winter Soldier had a metal arm."

"He doesn't need more than one arm to kill you," says Natasha. Since he didn't even realize they were being followed, Bucky privately finds this assessment a little generous. "So you get it, right? Even if you'd managed to kill me, you weren't going to kill both of us. You'd long since have a bullet in your head if I hadn't told Yasha to stay out of the fight. I didn't want him to drop the food on the ground. So, dear little--what was your name?"

"Ludmila S-Sidorova," says the girl quietly.

"Stupid, brash Ludmila Sidorova, I think now you understand that you were dead from the second you stepped into this alley." Natasha pauses. "So since you're already dead and your overlords know it, maybe we don't need to actually kill you."

Bucky blinks. He must have misheard her. He swears she just offered to spare someone who tried to assassinate them. Natasha spares him a brief glance before returning her attention to Ludmila.

"Wh-what are you saying?" Ludmila asks, still wincing at the grip on her hair.

"I'm saying, Ludmila Sidorova has already been written off by her employer and they know they won't find your body if they bothered to come look for it, so this is your one golden opportunity to get out and go somewhere far, far away and start over, be free and be what _you_ want to be."

"I have no desire to be an American traitor like you," says Ludmila, predictably.

"They betrayed you first," says Natasha.

Ludmila strikes like a snake, grabbing Natasha's wrist in both hands and wrenching her grip free (losing a good chunk of hair in the process) while shifting onto one knee and twisting her whole body in towards Natasha. Natasha's wrist is turned, putting her in an elbow-lock, and Ludmila pivots on her knee and sweeps her other leg hard, trying to take out Natasha's legs. Natasha is bent awkwardly, trying not to dislocate her arm, but still manages to jump over Ludmila's scything kick. When she lands, she brings her heel down on Ludmila's calf hard enough that if she'd been wearing heavier boots, Bucky is certain she'd have snapped the shin bone; as it is, he can't assess the damage but Ludmila grunts in pain and uses her leverage on Natasha's arm to try to pull her to the ground. It takes more experience and surprise than that to get the drop on Natasha and knock her off-balance; Natasha goes where she's pulled but steps over Ludmila, and by the time she starts to topple over she has Ludmila's head trapped between her legs, her ankles locked so that the hold can't be broken. She twists as she falls and the momentum snaps Ludmila's neck. Bucky watches the girl's hands go slack from their grips on Natasha's forearm and thigh and she collapses as Natasha lands in a defensive curl on the pavement, absorbing the impact with the right side of her back and her arm, and instantly rolls back over her shoulder and up into a crouch.

When she registers that Ludmila is dead, she sags a little, panting, and then rises to her feet slow and weary. Bucky steps away from his position at the wall as she brushes dirt and gravel off of her ass. He spares the dead girl a look but he's far more concerned for Natasha, who has a pinched look on her face and a minute tremble in her hands. Might be adrenaline.

He has a lot of questions but he starts by saying, "Never knew you to be merciful."

"Not that it changed the outcome," she says flatly, staring at Ludmila's body as she straightens her clothes.

"We both knew it wouldn't," he says. "But that's not your fault."

A muscle twitches in her jaw. "That's not making me feel okay about it right now."

"It had to be done," he says, trying to be patient and soothing. "And if you hadn't, I would have." He pauses. "Unless she'd taken your offer."

"They never take it," she says, still staring at the body. "But I still make it, every time. As if the next one is gonna be the one."

Bucky absorbs this. "How many times has this happened?"

Natasha finally looks away from the body, pulling out her phone. Probably texting Hill or somebody for a cleanup crew. "She's the fourth."

"So they only want a new Black Widow," he says slowly, "if she's better than you?"

She puts the phone back in her pocket and glances down both ends of the alley before moving to pick up Ludmila under the arms, dragging the body out of plain sight and shielding it from curious eyes with a couple garbage cans and a pallet until the cleanup crew arrives. Apparently she doesn't want to hang around waiting for them. "Yeah, but they're never that good," she says. She brushes her hands off on her pants and steals both grocery bags from him, carrying both in her left hand. "Come on; someone's en route to deal with this and they'll be here in five." She leads him out of the other end of the alley, turning toward Steve's again.

"I have to agree they're lacking," says Bucky, squinting in the sunlight. "If it were you trying to take out a target at your level, you'd be doing it through a scope, not up close and personal."

He takes her silence as agreement and debates his next words, but says them anyway. "So what happens when that person eventually comes along?"

"Well, I probably won't feel it if they're as good as me," she says, not looking at him, "so it's not worth worrying too much about."

"That's one perspective," he says, exasperated. She keeps staring straight ahead, shifting her grip on the plastic bag handles a little bit. He considers trying to take one back but she's clearly carrying both in her off-hand so that they each have a hand free in case Ludmila had back-up. Knowing how Red Room always worked, Bucky very much doubts she did but he supposes a little extra vigilance between them can't go amiss right now.

They walk a block and a half in silence before he finds the words to voice his next thought. "Have you considered the other reason they keep throwing half-trained teenagers at you?" he asks hesitantly.

Natasha says nothing. Her face is a mask.

He feels needled by the lack of response and pushes a little harder. "That they haven't got anyone better than you and they know it? That they want _you_ back?"

"Oh, it crossed my mind," she drawls. "Sometime after the third one."

"So, what then?"

She finally shoots him a sidelong look. "You think I want to go back there?" Her voice is a little incredulous.

"Do you have a plan? What if they try to take you instead of asking?"

Natasha arches an eyebrow. "You said it yourself, Bucky. They haven't got anyone better than me. And they know it."

"Okay then," he says. He thinks he might draft some contingency plans anyway, just to be on the safe side. And hope that her fifth would-be replacement isn't a sniper.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> The ending may seem like I'm planning another follow-up but currently I'm not, just FYI. Thanks for reading!


End file.
